Reminiscing

I used to post quite a lot on these forums. There were a few reasons for this; the main one being that early in my CN career I was on the winning side of a couple lopsided wars and found myself bored to tears by them. I decided it would be more fun to try the other side, and you know I was right. Probably why I'm still here, but CN warfare against the odds is actually pretty fun. I'm also a fast typer and good at coming up with controversial remarks, especially crazy-sounding but technically plausible conspiracy theories in a jiffy too.

I was reading the forums today and I realized that the last alliance Invicta fought against back when I was in high government had finally disbanded. Invicta's still here, although I'm not in it anymore. Anyway that was TOP, who we fought against way back in Karma when I was Vice President of Invicta.

Still, my favourite posts were the jokes. I didn't make that many of them here on the big boards as I was too busy trying to start wars, preferably ones which would last a ridiculous amount of time, most of the time. But I did make some jokes. Here are links to my two favourite posts of mine:

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I was against that post at the time but eh whatever, it really happened.

Timitz, who was at the time a sort of new member in Invicta high government, handled the war assignments for the majority of Hegemony AAs. This was largely because on the night of the Karma counter against NPO, a huge group of Continuum NPO allies wanted to pull out and not defend NPO, arguing that they were not required to because NPO had violated intelligence clauses in treaties. Invicta and She Said She Was 18 were the only two AAs that immediately promised aid. (To be fair to them, there were no Legion government awake at the time. Once they woke up and came online, they all immediately agreed to help as well.)

There were two events that changed that. The first one was that Doctor Fresh, who was then MCXA government, made a pretty good speech in favour of defending NPO in the #hegemony IRC channel. (Which got leaked everywhere. #hegemony was probably about one-quarter Karma spies lol.) The second one was that Karma got wind of what was going on and everyone basically knew that IRON was next if NPO stood alone. Since FinsterBaby at IRON was leading the betray-NPO squad, that put an end to that scheme right there.

TOP made an agreement with Karma to allow IRON to technically defend while suffering minimal damage, and the game was on.

In the post-Karma period, the treaty with Invicta was one of the first ones NPO announced. Nobody paid attention to the fact that I had downgraded on them, and Invicta's two highest treaty partners were now UPN and BAPS. But oh well, if people actually read treaty texts this would have been a completely different game lol.

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It all feels like an age ago. I really loved Invicta, enough to turn down Dawny's suggestion of merging into UPN because I thought you all deserved more. We had great times, especially when we were pariahs post-Karma. They were the best times.

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An Invicta-UPN merger would probably have been absolutely disastrous for both alliances. Invicta was so tightly controlled at the top and such a Wild West among the general membership. I remember when Kae went to UPN, that drama would have been just crazy if we'd all been one alliance. Never mind what would have happened if Mag and Samo had been stuck in the same alliance as me lol.

Amazingly, Invicta is still going. Their forums seem to be still active, I thought way back in the Karma era that we would outlast a lot of our detractors but the project's actually been more successful than I thought it would be. If you'd told me that they'd put Swat into government and still be around years later, I would have been very dubious.

Anyway I no longer consider my old opsec rules relevant, so if anyone wants to talk to me about pre-2011 Purple politics, fire away. I always wanted to start wars. CN can be pretty dull so I figured that infuriating the occasional person would help keep people interested. Guys like Samo never understood that; he criticized me for playing the game badly. And well, I had played the game "well" in my early period, the way he would have approved of, and I just got to the Illuminati War which was a total letdown and right around then I changed my playstyle.

This was one of the reasons I had that obnoxious opsec system in place. It allowed me to surprise people sometimes by pulling off schemes, and well, the rest of the time it just annoyed people who - like Kae - wanted to know more than I was ever going to tell them. IC aggravation led to lots of wars, some of them pretty fun too. 😎

So I kept secrets from absolutely everyone. I might have forgotten some of them by now but I have a pretty long memory.

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Kae joined UPN because she realised Invicta were never going to join the C&G side and didn't know enough about UPN to realise we weren't going to either. A lot of it had to do with us leaving Poseidon, which wasn't a political move, but a we hate everything Poseidon stood for move *. She basically got the wrong idea of our motives and left in a huff over a miscommunication in CDT about where we were going next.

* Valhalla saw that other Continuum allies had their own "subject blocs" and wanted their own. We should never have joined

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Kae joined UPN to get away from me. We had to replace our Vice President, I forget now who it had been, and I was Minister of Foreign Affairs and she was Minister of Finance.

Kae was an incredibly industrious Finance minister. She really built the Invicta tech machine. But it was all a one-woman show, and she didn't really have a team. So I got the job essentially because she was irreplaceable in Finance, whereas I actually had managed to recruit some people into Foreign Affairs.

She had already had runins with me over the opsec paranoia. I wouldn't tell people things. I kept Jor in the loop, but most of Invicta government just didn't get updated on what I was up to in FA. And frankly, Jor didn't really care very much about FA and let me do my thing, I think most of the time even when I did fill him in on things he didn't really listen.

It's funny you say that now about C&G. I had signed Athens to a PIAT, I didn't really talk much to the rest of C&G but I was pretty close to a number of Karma alliances, including ODN and MHA. We had only recently stopped the tech shipments to Grämlins, and that was only because we had too many tech buyers inside Invicta. During the Karma war I acted as a kind of conduit between Triyun (NPO FA IO) and Londo (leader of Athens), both of which would complain to me about the other. 😎

I wanted to leave Poseidon all along. I signed BAPS to TODDY in order to guarantee our continued protection of Pegasus, which I liked, after we left the bloc. But I couldn't stand chefjoe (leader of Valhalla, usually called CJ). I did have other people I liked in Valhalla but wow did we ever hate each other.

In fact, after the War of the Coalition I wanted Invicta to leave Purple entirely. I had been pretty disgusted by the whole STA-Valhalla affair as well as Legion-Vanguard; I wanted to keep us in Purqua but shift to Aqua with NATO, and leave you guys as the single Purple alliance. Not very many people knew about this plan, it got stopped by Dawny (co-founder of Invicta) and Atlashill (then leader of Invicta; normally referred to as AH during this time period). IIRC Denzin (MHA triumvir) knew about it though and was in favour. If that had happened, we probably would still have been a Hegemony alliance but right on the very edge, NATO would have rolled with Continuum and we would have gone that way. But maybe not, maybe under those circumstances Trident might have kept NATO and led to NATO being a Karma alliance. When the plan got shot down, I nearly left Invicta and joined the then very new Argent alliance, which was absolutely chockfull of my favourite people from MHA at the time. Dawny persuaded me to stay in Invicta.

I did manage to make some changes in Poseidon. I got the gigantic senate rotation plan through. Nowadays, Purple is a normal colour, all the senators are from the same alliances every month. However, by about 2011 I think I had the senate rotation through, which meant that every single Poseidon or P.E.A.C.E. member got a turn having a senator, including some pretty small alliances. Purple was a good place to go if you wanted to be a micro with a senator back then.

If I had succeeded in getting Stickmen into P.E.A.C.E., which might have led to my fantasy scenario of Valhalla leaving Poseidon and losing its senator - or disbanding Poseidon entirely and just keeping P.E.A.CE. and Pegasus, we might have had a truly huge rotation.

Oh yeah, another tidbit. When Invicta upgraded ODN in the summer of '08 to an MDP, Dawny told me that CJ threw a fit and wanted to have me ejected from Invicta so Valhalla could ZI me. Apparently I hadn't updated their government on the plans.

Well, of course I had updated them... sort of. I talked about it to Toga, who was then a Norn. I considered him government, CJ didn't. The reason I told Toga was because I knew that Toga would just say "Oh, OK" about it whereas CJ would probably have figured out what I was up to. Also Toga apparently failed to tell anyone about it lol. (Which I wasn't expecting. But it made the situation funnier so I was good with that.)

The reason I did that was because, at the time, it looked like ODN was going to defend Polar in the War of the Coalition. I wanted to make sure they got out with an easy peace. So Diomede (then ODN government, possibly a Senator, I can't remember exactly what now) and I wrote this really strange defence clause that only becomes mandatory when the other alliance really needs help. A few people noticed that when it was posted. I remember in particular Ephie (Ephriam Grey, former Invicta government, then leader of Andromeda, a small protectorate of VE) picked up on it and posted repeatedly asking us whether it was an MDP or not. Anyway the idea had been that if ODN was getting totally curbstomped, we'd have this clause that we could use to pressure Valhalla & co. into letting them out, or else we'd have to declare on someone not a treaty partner at war with ODN.

This curious clause led to later drama during Karma. In the runup to Karma, it was obvious that ODN was going to be a Karma alliance. But we still had this treaty, so they contacted us. However, Diomede had left ODN (I think he was in Argent then), and nobody left in ODN had actually bothered to read the treaty. Of course I had written the treaty and knew what it was for, so I told them that them joining Karma was allowed because I knew it wasn't a treaty violation.

Then ODN goes and suspends the treaty. Because of course they haven't read it. There was a huge negative reaction. After Karma we downgraded them back to a PIAT, as they had actually honoured the terms of our original PIAT, which ended up eventually getting cancelled by them.

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Interesting viewpoints. We used to talk to Dawny, Jorost and others more than yourself so we got a very different perspective of events in Invicta, but it certainly is interesting to hear it from your end. Although I must admit the notion of us allowing Stickmen into PEACE makes me chuckle.

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Yeah I wanted to do the Stickmen thing mostly because it would have led to an implosion by CJ. I didn't think it was a plan that had a very high chance of success, but if they'd gone "Sure!" when I first approached them I would have seriously swung for it. Even though it would probably have cost me the BAPS treaty, which I did value and which did pay off in the long term.

In the early days, actually even before I was Invicta (I started out in a Purple micro called NRGW), I talked to Hans quite a bit, and then there was the Ataraxia drama and that mostly put an end to that heh. By the time Karma rolled around I was talking to you at UPN the most I think, Alt. Which is largely why there was all that drama between the two alliances over the stuff I was doing during Karma, because I was personally responsible for most of Invicta's major FA decisions at the time.

Hmm, I also remember the Dark Evolution drama. UPN supported DE's entry into CDT, for reasons I have still never been able to figure out, and I hated them. I considered Hunter to be both an idiot and a proxy for zzzptm, and the rest of them were only slightly better. (Incidentally, when I finally left Invicta I joined Javahouse, which is where zzzptm's reroll was. I didn't know that before joining, but my arrival did make him nervous I think. He was reassured when I told him that I'd only ever wanted to do one ZI against him and I never believed in chasing rerolls.) BAPS hated DE too, and this was one of the things that brought us together.

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"UPN supported DE's entry into CDT, for reasons I have still never been able to figure out, and I hated them"

I was firm friends with them, especially the boys from Element. Also remember that in previous guises they had already been long-standing CDT members as HoG and BDC. Finally, I trusted Coolgreen, to keep them on the straight and narrow, as he was good leader. BAPS wasn't a consideration because I knew that push come to shove they would have picked Valhalla over either of us anyway so I didn't bother with them.

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I liked Triyun and I wanted him to be successful in his internal projects inside NPO. He totally wasn't; however I agreed to Watling essentially to help Triyun out. If Triyun had gotten his way though, Karma would have looked hugely different.

I did use Watling as leverage to get Hunter out of DE. Of course I didn't need to do any convincing; during the GLOP incident I got word to Moo what Hunter had done and Moo did all the work. But I was the one who triggered the meeting.

I hated BDC too lol. I never really knew Coolgreen.

I nearly pried BAPS away from Valhalla during the Dave War. When we attacked MK (in defense of our freshly-signed treaty with CSN) I invited BAPS along, and they really wanted to come. It was a close call then, but it was also too late, BAPS were mostly retiring by that point. But BAPS really hated MK and it bothered them a lot when they weren't allowed to fight their hated enemy because of Duckroll. Still, they pushed Duckroll to take the "Anyone who hits Invicta gets countered by BAPS and Duckroll backs BAPS up" policy that really took the pressure off of Invicta in that war, because MK's midrange wasn't competitive with ours, and it meant that we were only fighting MK for the duration of the war.

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I despised Triyun. He and Vektor and others had the gall to mock my inefficiency and say I'd never be a power. (Probably because I kept reminding them of how much of total failures they were for disregarding my work.). I wish they had remained around to annihilate. I at least got a hold of Centurius before he bailed.

They (Tri and Vek) CAUSED Karma. I can tell you internally I warned them about Karma and they did NOTHING to prevent it. I was over Aqua-sphere at the time and predicted the outbreak of hostilities at least a month in advance. The report still exists somewhere in the depths our forums I hope. They were so full of self-interest that their personal political goals were all that mattered and in the end they lived a coward's existence on "retirement aa's". They knew I was coming for them when they left the order and I started gaining strength. If They'd succeeded NPO would likely be wrecked.. and they were also part of the toxicity that lead to this world's decline.. so IMHO, good riddance.

Dragons are vengeful bastards when you tell them they're scrawny and they grow up on you.

So @Centurius Just have to ask.. how's your efficiency doing? Dismantled you and @Crymson in tandem.. .. them were the good days. Looks like he's even beating you in the recovery race.

In doing my duty I never cared much for my pixels, but others would always remind me how much they were valued to them. You could say that war was my Karma War.

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You're in luck: I'm checking these forums for the first time in four years, and I saw your notification.

Per your claims on Karma: having had my finger very much on the pulse of Cybernations at that stage, I can tell you that you're incorrect; Vektor and Triyun certainly weren't the catalysts for it. If anything, they were--after the retirements of Dilber and Philosopher--the only competent foreign affairs persons remaining in the ranks of NPO's government at that time.

Karma was caused by the rampaging incompetence and power-tripping of such fools as Moo-Cows, Zha'Dum, and so on. Under Moo's leadership--particularly in the absence of Dilber and Philo--NPO progressively made enemies of a larger and larger proportion of the treaty web while increasingly alienating friends and allies, all the while operating under the bizarre belief that the latter would mindlessly fall into line to protect NPO when the butcher's bill ultimately came due. Needless to say, they ended up unpleasantly surprised on that count. I've seen the logs of NPO's IO channel on the night the Karma War erupted, when it became suddenly apparent to all those present that they did not have the strength to win the conflict they'd started. Their genuine astonishment at the situation was absolutely hilarious to behold; the vast majority had a sublime lack of understanding as to how their own choices had led directly and inexorably to that ultimate consequence. The hubris was truly amazing.

It was Moo and company who had critically undermined the cohesion of Continuum in the latter half of 2008, who lost friends and made enemies of the majority of that bloc's members, who had carelessly bullied and power-played their way into the elusive scenario of those stagnant days: one in which a number alliances were, at last, willing to band together against NPO in sufficient numbers to make a fair fight of things. For TOP's part, Vektor and Triyun were the only ones who paid us any attention or our opinions any heed, Triyun throughout the early stages of that year and Vektor on the days leading up to the war and indeed up to the very moment it was begun. It was the rest of NPO's leadership that blithely neglected a critical relationship with TOP, arrogantly content up until the very night the war began to assume we'd simply fall into lockstep, no matter that it was the umpteenth time during our treaty relationship that they'd callously trampled on our agenda without any consideration.

That was an enormous mistake. TOP was, punch for punch, quite possibly the most militarily powerful alliance in the game at the outset of Karma, and we had a great deal of political pull to boot. NPO absolutely needed our support if it was to begin that war on even an equal footing with the opposition, and Moo's very act of starting that war was--after nine months spent entirely unconcerned with our opinions about anything--to give us a giant middle finger that we were entirely unwilling to forgive. We'd beseeched him to avoid pursuing an entirely petty issue into a war that would leave us in an incredibly awkward position, and indeed I was mediating talks with an aim toward resolving the issue---talks that ended when Moo abruptly decided he'd had enough and immediately declared war. I know for a fact that Triyun and Vektor were against this and tried to stop it, but Moo and his gang of cronies were not having any of that. That event about sums up the NPO mindset that brought about Karma.

If Vektor and Triyun told you that you didn't have what it took, my admittedly limited experience with you would lead me to agree. And if you did indeed end up becoming "a force," as you say, you did so in the twilight years of a moribund game. My recollection of your behavior is comprised largely of your megalomaniacal, hysterical rants made years ago. You'd have been a perfect fit in NPO's hierarchy during its glory years. It was the many people of your temperament in NPO's government who helped topple NPO's from its position of glory, and indeed the very types who led me to quit that alliance and migrate to TOP in the first place. The irony of that has always amused me, as I played probably the greatest role in building TOP from a largely passive observer into an active, powerful political force whose support NPO ultimately took for granted and whose independence they underestimated; and I was there, on the night the Karma War began, when we terminally lost patience with NPO and told them to take a hike.

That said, this all took place years ago and in the context of a game. I have no particular hard feelings toward you or anyone else, save those few who were legitimately bad human beings. I'm not sure what "dismantling" you're referring to, nor the recovery race you've referenced. I recently reactivated my nation at the behest of others, after years in the inactivity pile.

In any event, I've enjoyed this trip down memory lane. For three or four years, this was an engaging game with a stellar community. It's a shame that didn't last.

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You're in luck: I'm checking these forums for the first time in four years, and I saw your notification.

1. Per your claims on Karma: having had my finger very much on the pulse of Cybernations at that stage, I can tell you that you're incorrect; Vektor and Triyun certainly weren't the catalysts for it. If anything, they were--after the retirements of Dilber and Philosopher--the only competent foreign affairs persons remaining in the ranks of NPO's government at that time.

2. Karma was caused by the rampaging incompetence and power-tripping of such fools as Moo-Cows, Zha'Dum, and so on. Under Moo's leadership--particularly in the absence of Dilber and Philo--NPO progressively made enemies of a larger and larger proportion of the treaty web while increasingly alienating friends and allies, all the while operating under the bizarre belief that the latter would mindlessly fall into line to protect NPO when the butcher's bill ultimately came due. Needless to say, they ended up unpleasantly surprised on that count. I've seen the logs of NPO's IO channel on the night the Karma War erupted, when it became suddenly apparent to all those present that they did not have the strength to win the conflict they'd started. Their genuine astonishment at the situation was absolutely hilarious to behold; the vast majority had a sublime lack of understanding as to how their own choices had led directly and inexorably to that ultimate consequence. The hubris was truly amazing.

3. It was Moo and company who had critically undermined the cohesion of Continuum in the latter half of 2008, who lost friends and made enemies of the majority of that bloc's members, who had carelessly bullied and power-played their way into the elusive scenario of those stagnant days: one in which a number alliances were, at last, willing to band together against NPO in sufficient numbers to make a fair fight of things. For TOP's part, Vektor and Triyun were the only ones who paid us any attention or our opinions any heed, Triyun throughout the early stages of that year and Vektor on the days leading up to the war and indeed up to the very moment it was begun. It was the rest of NPO's leadership that blithely neglected a critical relationship with TOP, arrogantly content up until the very night the war began to assume we'd simply fall into lockstep, no matter that it was the umpteenth time during our treaty relationship that they'd callously trampled on our agenda without any consideration.

4.That was an enormous mistake. TOP was, punch for punch, quite possibly the most militarily powerful alliance in the game at the outset of Karma, and we had a great deal of political pull to boot. NPO absolutely needed our support if it was to begin that war on even an equal footing with the opposition, and Moo's very act of starting that war was--after nine months spent entirely unconcerned with our opinions about anything--to give us a giant middle finger that we were entirely unwilling to forgive. We'd beseeched him to avoid pursuing an entirely petty issue into a war that would leave us in an incredibly awkward position, and indeed I was mediating talks with an aim toward resolving the issue---talks that ended when Moo abruptly decided he'd had enough and immediately declared war. I know for a fact that Triyun and Vektor were against this and tried to stop it, but Moo and his gang of cronies were not having any of that. That event about sums up the NPO mindset that brought about Karma.

5.If Vektor and Triyun told you that you didn't have what it took, my admittedly limited experience with you would lead me to agree. And if you did indeed end up becoming "a force," as you say, you did so in the twilight years of a moribund game. My recollection of your behavior is comprised largely of your megalomaniacal, hysterical rants made years ago. You'd have been a perfect fit in NPO's hierarchy during its glory years. It was the many people of your temperament in NPO's government who helped topple NPO's from its position of glory, and indeed the very types who led me to quit that alliance and migrate to TOP in the first place. The irony of that has always amused me, as I played probably the greatest role in building TOP from a largely passive observer into an active, powerful political force whose support NPO ultimately took for granted and whose independence they underestimated; and I was there, on the night the Karma War began, when we terminally lost patience with NPO and told them to take a hike.

6.That said, this all took place years ago and in the context of a game. I have no particular hard feelings toward you or anyone else, save those few who were legitimately bad human beings. I'm not sure what "dismantling" you're referring to, nor the recovery race you've referenced. I recently reactivated my nation at the behest of others, after years in the inactivity pile.

7.In any event, I've enjoyed this trip down memory lane. For three or four years, this was an engaging game with a stellar community. It's a shame that didn't last.

1. They were in their own way. There was no singular cause to that entire mess. There were many problems at the top. You're right, the loss of Dilber and Philosopher was a setback. I question your definition of competence. A competent person does not disregard the sources of information at its disposal because the information is inconvenient to one's whims.

2. Speaking from within. I know that Triyun and Vektor both influenced this hubris and helped grow it.

3. You weren't the only group that needed paid attention to and Triyun and Vektor clearly weren't listening to anyone but themselves in that regard, but agreed that TOP was neglected, but I think you greatly underestimate Triyun and Vektor's role in that. They were heavilly lackluster in their performance. The claimed labor where little was seen. Thus, as you said, TOP's feeling of neglect.

4. Please note, you said Moo and his gang of Cronies.. of which inexorably.. Vektor and Triyun were just that. Since they left I have never seen any other legates ignore the reports of their subordinates in such a manner. You could say it's one of the lessons the order took to heart in the war.

5. Vektor and Triyun were fools who knew I joined just before and sacrificed much in Karma for our order while they fled to the safety of other homes. I served in my capacity quite well, it's not my fault they were too foolish and headstrong to heed warning or read the reports they had me generate. Perhaps if they had, maybe Top would have actually HAD some attention and maybe even the war might have been reconsidered. But no, they had their agenda, they pressed it, and they got our collective butts handed to us. Their resentment only grew when I pointed out their very personal roles in helping bring that war about so their judgement.. ahem.. not exactly clear headed or unbiased and intentionally intended to harm. My rants have always been megalomania-cal.. if they're not I'm sick. And yes, you did do just that (telling us to take a hike). I still enjoyed getting my revenge later, crater.

6. You're actually doing better than Cent.. who is the one I have a greater qualm with. You never were one to mock.. But Cent.. Oh how I loved cratering him. I was just using you as a point of comparison as I fought you and he not long apart.. if not simultaneously during equilibrium for a brief period. You went inactive and are still out pacing him in recover. Perhaps he's gone inactive too. I'm like you, I only hold grudges against horrible human beings.. and there are at least 3. Lets just say that if either of the other two had been able to be targeted during equilibrium I'd have been after them as well. I take great pride in the work and contributions i've given since those days, when others fled and I stood firm. One thing I may say that they may not, almost everyone in the Order would agree it wouldn't have been the same without me.. and that's why I couldn't give any care for what you or any other think of my role within my group or this game. You don't have to tell me my history. I lived it with my brothers and sisters.

Twilight years? Moribund game? I've been in this position for almost a good 2-3 years now at the very least. It's still here. These sounds like the justification of one who does not want to see their fall in a clearer light.

7. It's not dead yet. You can still bring new life here, it's just apparently people've forgotten how.

Or perhaps they've just lost the will to fight.

Also, if I don't hold grudges.. it's hard to take enjoyment out of annihilating someone. I feel.. more satisifed.. when there is equal weight moral imperative to destroying my targets. You just happened to be an alliance leader, a trophy to collect. Other targets i have a more visceral taste for. There've even been a few targets whom I held in high regard that I literally held my nose while nuking because I would rather have stayed their allies, but sometimes the will of the world doesn't shape out the way needed to grant one such luxuries.

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Triyun and Vektor knew that there was a storm coming inside Continuum. They wanted NPO to side with Citadel against, well, the Valhalla/TPF branch. That's why they signed the big treaty with MHA. This is especially true for Triyun, note that he went to TOP after the war, which was decidedly not the safe spot to go to after Karma.

I'm still not entirely convinced that Vektor wasn't a spy actually. He had formerly been a poster on the LUE boards at GameFAQs.

Moo didn't really know what to do, but when bigwoody started running with Blackstone Collusion's bait he was forced to choose between what Dilber and Triyun wanted and the TORN MADP. He went with the treaty.

Now if you want to complain of people being dumb, oh man, bigwoody really took the cake. mhawk knew we were going to get razed, but bigwoody was convinced it was going to be an even war.

mhawk just thought that if we had waited longer things would have gotten worse. This was probably true... for TPF. I don't know for sure if he realized Triyun wasn't exactly working with the best interests of his alliance at heart, but he'd have to have been pretty dumb to miss hints like the MHA treaty.

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Z'ha was largely inactive by the time of Karma. He definitely was part of the old mold of power-tripping goons around NPO at the time, but he's only indirectly a cause of Karma.

There are plenty of people still playing this game, I'm even one of them in my way. There obviously aren't as many as there used to be but there's still a core of players. There always were a lot of inactives, and we lost people all the time. I mean, I nearly quit when Skyrim came out, and I'm pretty sure a lot of other people actually quit when that happened. But it's a pretty low-cost game to keep running so I suspect it will be around for a while to come yet.

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Interesting reading. NPO's pre-Karma foreign affairs department was terrible, a combination of paranoia in which we found out 2nd hand from others that we weren't to be trusted and incompetance in getting assigned a different diplomat each week who knew progressively less than the last. I wouldn't have minded except that my prefered position was to have no relationship with them at all, in the full-awareness that we were going to be on the same side anyway via Purqua, but the message we were getting from our allies was that NPO was uncomfortable with "friend of a friend" situations and wanted to have a direct relationship, so we agreed to Watling Street Compact to put everyones minds at rest. It was just paper though, no substance.

If we were experiencing that I'd be amazed if similiar sized mid-tier alliances weren't getting the same treatment, a significant portion of which weren't as tied into a friend of a friend situation as we were. If it wasn't the reason for losing the Karma war I certainly think it didn't help NPO's case.

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Triyun liked UPN, he wanted to bring you guys on board. I don't know about the diplomats, I spent more time talking to the IOs directly myself during that timeframe, I don't remember who the Legate for Purple was back then.

Valhalla really didn't like UPN though, and if they had sway with the Purple Legate that would explain some of that confusion. Valhalla went around telling anyone who would listen that UPN were untrustworthy. Of course, so did Ragnarok and a good portion of NPO's pre-Karma mission plan in FA was to bring Ragnarok on board, so that might well have been a factor too.

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Yep, Triyun was always friendly and I genuinely like him back, but it didn't seem like he was in charge. To be fair he didn't give us the impression he thought he was either.

Valhalla obviously didn't trust me and they were right to, because I was working against them. Nearly had them too, but Dawny screwed that up. There was a window, when they finally listened to reason and kicked NoWedge out, that I legitimately gave them a chance to show they'd changed, but Chefjoe proved worse, a different kind of awful and I spent the better part of a year trying to show the rest of the Purple sphere that, including the rest of UPN. It was damn frustrating, because outside of BAPS and some micros no-one in Purple seemed to actually like Valhalla but it felt like I was the only one who wanted to do something about it.

Actually felt a bit sorry for Ragnarok for basically kicking them out of CDT. They hated us for years after that and poisoned any good relations we had with Superfriends (which were tense anyway) We did it because we were pushing CDT to be more Polaris friendly and they were an obstacle to that (or so we thought, Hoo insisted afterwards we'd got it wrong and that they were ok with ties in that direction, seems unlikely but he might have been right) Anyway, it was a huge mistake and entirely my own fault, because I overestimated CDT's pull and ability to be a force independent of other blocs, but put my heart and soul into making CDT a player and it just didn't pan out. Too many conflicting interests.

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You were completely wrong about Hoo, after WotC he was fine with Polaris, as witnessed by his actions later on when he forced Ragnarok to flipflop and defend Polaris against Pandora's Box.

It was me that you had to worry about to be totally honest. I'd been suspicious of the Polars ever since MyWorld protected zzzptm and smuggled him to Nueva Vida, and then after Bipolar that whole relationship was doomed. It wasn't until I left Invicta active government that they started to have Polar ties again.

Chefjoe wasn't worse than noWedge. Everything CJ did was IC. There were tensions with STA - and STA was right to criticize him - but it wasn't the relationship drama that noWedge had lived for.

BAPS were loyal to mhawk because of his role in ousting noWedge and getting them peace. mhawk liked Valhalla, so they did too.

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Of course Hoo was friends with Polaris after WoTC but this all happened before that. Still, you could well be right.

I knew about your feelings about Polaris although to be fair you weren't on your own. That was the story of CDT though, we were all pulling in different directions. We kept it together until the BiPolar war just blew a hole and very publicly exposed the divisions for everyone to see.

I didn't like noWedge because of the OOC relationship crap like everyone else, I didn't like Chefjoe because he was trying to dominate the Purple sphere, the 2nd affected me more so he was a bigger problem. Case in point, I only agreed to joining Poseidon because we were tied in via Legion and Invicta anyway and at least that way we could keep tabs on whatever bollocks Valhalla and mhawk were coming up with, but you already knew that right?

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I really had to be dragged into supporting Poseidon. At the time, we had the senate agreement with Valhalla, and I didn't have to deal with Legion at all. I didn't want to have to deal with either Valhalla or Legion any more than I had to. All of my pre-Purplegate friends in Legion had either gone to STA or ODN except for SoL (Seasons of Love) and Hymenbreach, and by the time Poseidon started I think SoL was already in NPO and Hymen had pretty much vanished. Legion-STA relations were close to nil because of the Valhalla-Legion treaty and the Valhalla-STA situation. Purqua would have been better off siding with STA and ODN and forgetting the Poseidon project honestly.

At least, our stats would have been. Those wars were pretty fun though weren't they? 😎

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Oh yeah, can you tell that story? I never had any contact with the CSN folks at all.

We probably would have lost at least a third of the AA if we hadn't declared on MK. So many people had come to Invicta because they wanted to fight MK for one reason or another, we had essentially become a staging ground for MK haters.